GUIDELINES TO EXPLOIT CONVERSATION MODELS

PRE: READ THE PICTURES AND SPEAK (non-optional)

1. EXPLOIT THE PICTURE AND MAKE PREDICTIONS: Describe the picture, if any, to get a first understanding of the
conversation context.
In beginning levels: Start by asking students basic yes/ no questions about the picture. E.G. Is it an office or a
classroom? Do you think they are friends? Do they look happy? Are they talking about the weather, or the class?
Then, little by little, as they are able to answer with more complete sentences, ask them information questions:
Where are they? What do they look like? What do you think the relationship between them is? What do you
think they are talking about?
Finally, the ideal stage is to guide them to do picture exploitation on their own when they prepare the class in
advance and in the classroom, they share their ideas with their classmates. Initially, train students to use basic
structures like:
This is a small room.
These are English books.
I can seetwo people.
I can see a computer.
There isa house.
There aretwo classrooms.
The teacher is helping the student.
The student is reading.

2. HELP SS IDENTIFY AND MAKE SURE THEY UNDERSTAND THE INSTRUCTIONS.

WHILE 1: LISTENING PRACTICE (Optional)

1. IDENTIFY GENERAL INFORMATION

Ask students to listen for the first time without reading the script. The focus of the first listening should always be
to identify general information; that is, to look for the who, the what and the where:

WHO: Who are the participants in the conversation? What is the relationship between or among them? What are
their roles/occupations (if relevant)?
WHAT: What are they talking about? Whats the general idea of the conversation?
WHERE: Where are they? Whats the context? (if relevant)

2. IDENTIFY SOME MORE SPECIFIC INFORMATION

This part depends on the nature of each conversation, but here are some examples of the questions you can ask them to
answer by means of the second listening:

What are their names?

What is the main problem they are discussing?
What place do they agree to go to?
Whats the suggestion A gives B?
What exactly does A think about situation X?
What time do they agree to meet?
What are they going to there?
How much is the sweater?
Whats As occupation?

3. LISTEN TO CONFIRM

Once you collect some possible answers from the second listening and if necessary, play the recording for a third time for
students to confirm their answers.

WHILE 2: VOCABULARY, GRAMMAR AND PRONUNCIATION PRACTICE/PRESENTATION

1. LISTEN, READ AND IDENTIFY UNKNOWN VOCABULARY (Only if you find it necessary to focus on vocabulary. Otherwise,
you can continue with one of the next steps.)

This time, students will listen to and read the conversation simultaneously. Theres no need to repeat. The purpose of this
fourth listening is to identify unknown vocabulary i.e. underline or highlight it. After this, ask students to use their
dictionaries to look up words, clarify their meaning and organize them in their vocabulary notebooks. If necessary, analyze
the context and clarify specific uses of some words.
 2. LISTEN, READ AND IDENTIFY NEW STRUCTURES (Unless teachers prepare another context to present the new grammar
inductively, they should use the conversation models for this purpose.)
If you want to present grammar by means of a conversation model, this can be the moment. Ask them to focus on a
particular line or part of the conversation in which the new structure is presented. Ask them to analyze how the sentence
or phrase is organized. Here are some examples of questions you can ask:

Whats the question you use to ?

Whats the auxiliary in this question?
How do you construct the negative form of?
Whats the order of the words in this question?
Whats the difference between yes/no questions and information questions?
What do you add to the verb?

3. LISTEN AND REPEAT LINE PER LINE TO PRACTICE PRONUNCIATION

This step should not be optional for two reasons: The first one is that there are very few opportunities in some lessons to
focus on pronunciation and sometimes teachers forget it at all since they dont consider it a priority. However
pronunciation plays a major role in developing communicative competence. Conversation models offer great material and
modeling for this skill, so they should be exploited as much as possible.

The second reason is that pronunciation practice is the foundation for the final step in this process: speaking. Students will
feel much more confident and they will have more tools to perform well during the speaking practice that succeeds all the
steps above.

First, ask students to listen to each line and repeat after it. You can do focused practice on different aspects depending on
your students needs:
Vowel or consonant pronunciation (difficult words to pronounce)
Sound combinations
Sound alterations or reductions
Word linking
Intonation (especially in questions)
Word and sentence stress
Expressing emotions (happiness, sadness, excitement, disappointment, agreement, etc.)
Sarcasm
Be patient and repeat each line as many times as necessary until students get the correct patterns. They can take notes of
phonetic symbols or other conventions you can devise for students to remember those patters.
E.G.:
Stress
/ Intonation
__ Word linking

POST: SPEAKING (non-optional)

1. PRACTICE INDIVIDUALLY

Tell students to practice individually, following the correct pronunciation patterns and asking the teacher for
clarification if necessary.

2. PRACTICE IN PAIRS

Before asking students to work in pairs and in order to double-check students understanding of the instructions and
the patterns, choose a group, ask them to perform and provide feedback. Then proceed. Here are some ideas for
techniques that you can implement. You can choose just one or combine two or more:

READ, LOOK UP AND SAY: The student reads each line, memorizes it and then, looks at his partner in the eye and
says it.
PRACTICE WITH A SPECIFIC MOOD: You can assign each student or group a specific mood to act while role-playing
the conversation. Roles can be switched.
ROLE PLAY: focus on acting skills. This implies learning all the lines by heart.
PRACTICE FROM THE DISTANCE: Students practice the same conversation several times: Each time they do it, they
have to take one step far from each other. This will force them to work on effective voice projection. However in a
large class, it can become too noisy and messy. We recommend using this technique with small classes.
PRACTICE BY SUBSTITUTING INFORMATION: Ask students to practice with personal, ideal or imaginary information.

At the end, you can choose a few groups to present the conversation for the whole group.